The Art of Home Fragrance

The Art of Home Fragrance

Its National Fragrance Week this week, a yearly event that focuses on increasing awareness of the fragrance industry and the role fragrance plays in each of our lives, so were taking you behind-the-scenes of Ashleigh & Burwood to see how we craft our fragrances from concept to completion.

Striking the right mood(board)

When our New Product Development Team begins work on the products for a new season, the first step is always to bring together their inspirations and ideas for what they want to create and the mood they want to evoke with the new fragrances and designs. The team draws their inspiration from many sources, including their own interests, experiences on trips abroad, and trend reports that help give the team an idea of what elements will resonate with customers. As part of this process, the New Product Development Team creates a physical moodboard on which they pin together their inspiration for the new season, as well as ideas for colour, texture and design.

The smell of success

With home fragrance, theres always two sides to a product  what its going to look like and what its going to smell like. To create our fragrances we work in collaboration with UK-based perfumers to brainstorm and develop new fragrances for the season. The fragrances are then sampled, tested and approved by our New Product Development Team. When choosing new fragrances the team isnt just looking for something that smells great, but also a fragrance that evokes the right mood for the season and which brings something new to our existing portfolio of scents.

Grand designs

Over on the visual side, our in-house team of graphic designers is hard at work designing the new products and their packaging. The designers create any artwork that will be featured on the products or packaging, like our vibrant Wild Things designs or the Artistry Collection watercolour illustrations, as well as the blueprints for the packaging itself. After creating initial artwork, they feed back to Anna, the New Product Development Manager, and the rest of the team where they can discuss any changes that need to be made to designs. Once the digital designs have been reworked to perfection, prototypes are produced to give an idea of what the final product will look like and these are once again reviewed by the team until the designs are finalised.

Testing testing

Testing is a hugely important part of crafting our products. Its at this stage that we make sure our products are fit to perform as theyre intended, and that they do so to the best possible standard - once were satisfied by the results of our tests, the products are ready to go into production.

Because we offer a wide range of fragrance solutions, fragrances are formulated into Scented Candles, Reed Diffusers and Lamp Fragrances and we have to ensure that every fragrance works perfectly in each of these mediums. If there are any problems with their performance then the product is reformulated by our Quality Assurance Technician, Alison, and tested again.

To make sure our fragrances will perform well in every home we test them in a number of different environments, making sure the scent throw is not affected by cold temperatures or the size of a room. As well as testing everything at A&B HQ, we also send home products with our staff for them to report back on so we can see how they perform in a real home environment. The team is happy to help out and theres always a rush to try the newest scents!